Where Miss Snark vented her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushed them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark. The blog is dark--no further updates after 5/20/2007.

12.30.2006

HH Com 652

Mary Greenfield, a bookworm with plenty of time on her hands, is shaken when she wakes up in a strange bed not dressed in what she remembered wearing last and greeted by the sight of a man she does not know. The last thing she can recall is opening a book she had recentlybought at a used bookstore. Now that book is her only way home and the dark forces that rule the world she has fallen into want it for their own ends. With the help of the wizard who rescued her she must discover the secrets of the book before it is taken from her. As theyare pursued from world to world in their search for the secrets of the book Mary begins to doubt ever seeing home again; at the same time she learns of an inherent magical talent of her own and a growing love makes her question if she really wants to return home at all.

Fairyland is a 100,000 word adult fantasy novel that draws upon myths, folklore and fairy tales from across the globe, bringing them together to create a world beyond imagination.

Ditch the stuff in red to give us a more zippy starting point. Pare down and focus on what's going on: she's paging (ha) through the universe or something.

I like this idea. I don't read enough fantasy to know if it's old and overused, but I like it. I'd like it better if it was me and I woke up next to Mr. Clooney and I actually remembered how I'd gotten there.

Charles de Lint wrote about a magic book. Also, in Cornelia Funke's "Inkheart" characters are read in and out of books, and in part of it various characters are all after the last copy of Capricorn's book.

Still, I'd be willing to read another novel about a magic book. After all, I'm a book lover.

Books as transport aren't new, but I don't think are done to death either.

My problem with this hook was that it seems a little too general. Is the wizard the person Mary falls in love with? If so, perhaps you could name him and mention that.

What would happen if her book falls into the hands of the "dark forces that rule the world"? Who are these dark forces? Evil wizards? Killer bunnies? Flying monkeys?

Instead of just saying at the end that this story is influenced by "myths, folklore and fairy tales from across the globe," could we see some of that in the hook? Right now, all we've got is a wizard and "dark forces", which are pretty much from standard fantasy literature.

The Myst computer game series was based on transport through books as well.

As for the hook, the setup in the first couple sentences is good. Start a new paragraph at the word "Now" and write something more specific about what happens next (who the bad guys are, what they want, etc).

Not positive, but I think you can add Pagemaster to the through-the-book list, as well as Jasper Fforde's bookworld stuff.

But the book thing doesn't bother me, since it's mainly a portal into the fantasy world. I want to know what happens there to make this different from a hundred different books where Someone ends up in a fantasy world and can't get home.

And the hook doesn't tell me anything I haven't heard before about the guts of the story.

Agree with michele. You need specifics. There's nothing in this hook to make it different from any other fantasy book. The hero always has to defeat dark forces, they always fall in love, and they always have some angst about getting home. This is probably an interesting and unique book, but there's no way for us to know that through the hook.

Like mwt said, the computer game Myst was the first thing that came to my mind when I read this.

I enjoyed playing Myst, and I enjoyed this idea.

Author, could you flesh it out a bit more for us? What's the wizard's name, for instance (esp. if he's important to the plot)? Who are the bad guys? What are they up to? Can you give us a hint as to why she'd want to stay in this other world as opposed to coming back to this one?

The general idea sounds like fun. Give me some more specifics, and there's a good chance I'd read it.